There are now no people at the Manston migrant processing centre, Sky News understands.
The Home Office site in Kent, where thousands of migrants arriving in small boats have been taken since it opened in January, currently has zero people in it.
In recent weeks Manston has been at the centre of controversy as it is designed to hold up to 1,600 people for no more than 24 hours.
But earlier this month there were about 4,000 people in the centre, some who said they had been there for much longer than they should have been.
Migrants said they were sleeping on cardboard and unrest was spreading due to the conditions.
Concerns over infectious diseases were raised, with reports of diphtheria.
Three days ago, a man staying at the centre became unwell and died after arriving in the UK by small boat the weekend before.
There is “no evidence at this stage” to suggest the death was “caused by an infectious disease”, the Home Office said.
The Home Office said there will be no detailed comment until a post-mortem examination has been carried out.
A person staying at the Manston migrant processing centre in Kent has died in hospital, the Home Office has said.
They were admitted after becoming unwell and died on Saturday morning.
It is understood the person travelled to the UK by small boat and arrived last Saturday.
There is “no evidence at this stage” to suggest the death was “caused by an infectious disease”, the Home Office said.
There will be no detailed comment until a post-mortem examination has been carried out, the spokesman added.
“We take the safety and welfare of those in our care extremely seriously and provide 24/7 health facilities with trained medical staff at Manston,” he said.
The Home Office tweeted that it was “profoundly saddened by this event” and sent its “heartfelt condolences to all those affected”.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said there would “of course need to be a full investigation into this tragic case”.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said it was “vital that a thorough and speedy investigation takes place to understand what happened and whether all the necessary procedures were followed”.
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3:10
Migrant centres: Spike in disease
Manston has been at the centre of controversy in recent weeks.
It is designed to hold up to 1,600 people for no more than 24 hours but, earlier this month, there were about 4,000 on site.
Temporary marquees were set up to house the extra people.
Some migrants were threatening to self-harm and go on hunger strike, with unrest “spreading across the camp”, Sky News was told.
A farmer from Eritrea said he slept on cardboard and was given cold hot dogs for lunch.
Others begged for help via a message in a bottle thrown over the perimeter fence.
Earlier this week it was confirmed that more than 40,000 migrants had crossed the Channel this year.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, was recently criticised after telling MPs there is an “invasion on our southern coast”.
The UK has agreed a deal with France to try to reduce the number of people making the dangerous journey.
But migration and policing specialists said £8m in extra funding, a 40% increase in officers on French beaches, and enhanced intelligence sharing would not be enough to bring numbers down.
The Home Office is facing a judicial review over the conditions at the Manston migrant processing centre, the immigration minister has told Sky News.
Robert Jenrick said the legal action has begun after reports of severe overcrowding at the centre in Kent, which is meant to hold 1,600 people but has been housing about 4,000 migrants, according to MPs.
He told The Take with Sophy Ridge programme: “I believe we have received the initial contact for a judicial review.
“That’s not unusual, this is a highly litigious area of policy but of course, as the minister responsible, I want to make sure everything we do is conducted appropriately and within the law.”
Mr Jenrick said he could not reveal who had brought the judicial review as it was legally sensitive but Sky News understands the Home Office has received the pre-action protocol letter for a judicial review and the department will be responding “in due course”.
The immigration minister said he expects Manston to return to a “legally compliant site” soon – implying the site is not currently adhering to its legal obligations as a migrant processing site as the government faces a legal battle about it.
Judicial reviews determine the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body, in this case the Home Office. It takes about three to five months to get a decision but an injunction can halt action immediately.
News of a judicial review comes as:
• Lib Dem MP Michael Carmichael told the Commons the Home Secretary said she did not want to “prematurely release” migrants into local communities without having anywhere to stay – but there were reports a bus full of Manston migrants were “abandoned” at Victoria Station last night
• Kent and Medway council chiefs have written to the Home Secretary to urge her to stop using the county as an “easy fix” as they say they are under “disproportionate pressure” due to their location – and there are no more school spaces for year seven and nine local children due to the unplanned arrival of refugee children
• Four senior MPs, chairs of influential committees, have called on Mrs Braverman to explain how the government will get to grips with the migrant crisis as they expressed their “deep concerns” over the “dire” conditions at Manston
• Albania’s prime minister hit out at the UK government for blaming Albanians for the migrant crisis.
Extraordinary that a minister admitted what’s going on in Manston isn’t legal – ahead of a court fight
Robert Jenrick confirmed the government is now going to have to justify, in court, why what it was doing was legal.
He told The Take with Sophy Ridge: “I expect Manston will be returned to a well-functioning and legally compliant site very rapidly.”
I thought that was extraordinary – that sounds awfully like a minister sitting here admitting that what’s going on in Manston in Kent isn’t legal – as the government is about to face a fight on exactly that point in court.
Whether that will play into the legal arguments, we will see.
Mr Jenrick also talked about good forecasts. Turn that around, he means bad weather forecasts because over the weekend the lovely weather allowed lots of people to come over in small boats.
That put this extraordinary pressure, layered on the chronic systemic issues – people sleeping on floors, on chairs.
He denied the scabies reported at Manston was a consequence of what was going on in there but clearly there is a big problem with lots to fix.
This is all plugging into a difficult political area for the government but right now, remember Suella Braverman was given legal advice that sources say she ignored about the conditions in Manston – which she denies.
For a minister to basically be admitting what was going on inside Manston was illegal feels like quite a problem.
‘Expect Manston to be legally compliant soon’
The immigration minister, who was only appointed last week by Rishi Sunak, said he has been working with Home Secretary Suella Braverman to reduce the number of people and also the length of time they are staying at Manston – which is only meant to be 24 hours but has been much longer in some cases.
He added: “So the week I’ve been in post I’ve tried to work night and day to ensure the Manston site is not just legally compliant but is a humane and compassionate place where we welcome those migrants, treat them appropriately and then they leave quickly to alternative accommodation.
“I’m pleased to say that this evening that’s the path we’re on, the numbers at Manston have fallen very substantially since the weekend when we became aware of the specific issues and got involved so directly.
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1:39
Man discovers nephew is at Manston from paper
“I think we’re on a path now where within a matter of days, assuming we don’t see very large numbers of migrants coming across the Channel – I don’t think that’s going to happen as we have good forecasts of the weather and other intelligence from northern France.
“I expect Manston will be returned to a well-functioning and legally compliant site very rapidly.”
Image: There are around 30 temporary marquees housing migrants in Manston, Kent
This is the Conservatives’ making
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “The Conservative government has no excuse. They have been warned about these problems for months and failed to act.
“These problems are entirely of their making – their decision-making has collapsed, so the backlog has grown and they clearly haven’t planned or properly followed legal advice.
“We need urgent answers on what the home secretary knew and when. The prime minister promised integrity and professionalism but all they have shown is the opposite. This is complete chaos and they need to urgently get a grip.”
Labour’s shadow policing minister Sarah Jones told Sky News she was not surprised a judicial review had been launched and Manston was “working fine until five weeks ago when the home secretary decided not to add additional hotels” to house migrants.
Mr Jenrick denied he had taken over from Mrs Braverman in dealing with Manston after she was accused of failing to listen to legal advice that said migrants from Manston needed to be sent to hotels after being processed within a day of arriving.
She denied this in parliament on Tuesday.
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0:41
Migrants ‘threatening self-harm’
“We’ve been working extremely closely together, we’ve procured more hotels, extra support, brilliant officers from Border Force supported by contractors and armed forces,” Mr Jenrick added.
A Home Office spokeswoman told Sky News: “The number of people arriving in the UK via small boats has reached record levels and continues to put our asylum system under incredible pressure.
“Manston remains resourced and equipped to process migrants securely and we will provide alternative accommodation as soon as possible.
“We urge anyone who is thinking about leaving a safe country and risk their lives at the hands of criminal people smugglers to seriously reconsider. Despite what they have been told, they will not be allowed to start a new life here.”
The situation at the Manston migration centre in Kent is a “breach of humane conditions”, according to the Tory MP for the area.
Conservative backbencher Sir Roger Gale told Sky News that the facility is holding 4,000 people when it is only designed to hold 1,000, saying “that is wholly unacceptable”.
The MP for North Thanet said he visited the site on Thursday and things are “much worse” than the week before “when there were two and a half thousand people”.
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He said: “These circumstances, I believe now were a problem made in the Home Office.”
Sir Roger said that until around five weeks ago, the system was “working as it was intended”, but it was “now broken and it’s got to be mended fast”.
He called for an end to “dog-whistle” politics and said actionable solutions were needed instead.
Asked if Suella Braverman was the right person to be leading the Home Office, Sir Roger said he was not going to “point fingers”, but that “whoever is responsible, either the previous home secretary (Priti Patel) or this one, has to be held to account”.
“A bad decision has been taken and this has led to a breach of humane conditions.”
Sir Roger said he has put forward an urgent question to discuss the situation in the House of Commons.
Last week, a Home Affairs Select Committee heard conditions at Manston were “wretched”, with overcrowding, outbreaks of diseases and people being held for weeks longer than the 24 hours intended.
Image: There are reports Suella Braverman blocked the transfer of migrants from Manston to hotels
Questions have been raised about the home secretary’s judgement, following a report in The Times which claimed she blocked the transfer of asylum seekers to new hotels and ignored legal advice that the government was illegally detaining people at Manston.
Asked about the reports, environment minister Mark Spencer told Sky News Ms Braverman blocked migrants from being moved in a bid to “speed up” their applications.
His interview has been somewhat overshadowed after he suggested “some little man in China” was listening to his phone calls, in response to a question about reports Liz Truss’s phone was hacked while she was foreign secretary This has lead to criticism from Labour MPs who accused him of “ignorance” and “casual racism”.
On Migration, Mr Spencer added that the way to cut down on channel crossings was to “break the model” of people traffickers.
However he did not rule out new processing centres.
Sir Roger said he believed this was the “immediate solution”, saying student accommodation or former MOD accommodation could also be used to free up capacity at Manston.
However he stressed any new sites “must be used properly”.
He said Manston was meant to be turning people around in 24 hours but “as a result of Home Office policy, that is now broken”.
Labour has also called for Ms Braverman to take action and “make decisions” on migration to solve the current crisis.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said a “failure to make decisions” within the government had left people waiting for lengthy periods in supposedly temporary accommodation.
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8:32
Labour has called for Home Secretary Suella Braverman to act and
Ms Cooper claimed the home secretary had not made a proper statement on the crisis as there were still questions over her “own security breaches” – after her initial resignation for sending government information via a private email.
‘Entirely fresh approach needed’
Pressure is piling on the Home Office as a record of number of people continue to cross the channel, with 1,000 migrants arriving on Sunday.
The Home Office is already grappling with a 100,000 backlog in processing asylum applications, with 96% of those from last year still outstanding.
Read More: Suspect found dead after petrol bombs thrown at Border Force immigration centre in Dover Why is Suella Braverman’s appointment to home secretary controversial?
Officials have noted a surge in illegal migration from Albania, which has been blamed on criminal gangs having a “foothold” in northern France.
On Sunday, refugee charities wrote to the home secretary demanding the government create more safe routes to the UK as a solution to stopping the dangerous small boat crossings.
Meanwhile Kevin Saunders, former chief immigration officer for the UK Border Force, said the system is “broken” and that he would put asylum seekers on a cruise liner.
And Conservative MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke, said an “entirely fresh approach” is needed to tackle the “out of control” crossings in small boats.
She told TalkTV: “In the most immediate term that does mean stopping the boats leaving France. There are obviously a whole range of other measures, but at the moment a number of those are held up in the courts, a number of those are subject to more legal changes to go through Parliament, so all efforts have to go on stopping those boats and tackling the issue head on.”
